So, she hadn’t been sleeping much lately. Or really at all unless you count passing out drunk (which Jessica goddamn DID, thank you very much) so maybe she’s not really in the best shape to be fighting a bunch of human trafficking scumbags. But Luke had called and asked for her help and for some stupid reason she still felt like she owed the guy and it’s not like she was gonna let these asshats get away with it so fine, she’s here. What more do you want? Mental stability or something? Not really Jessica Jones’s specialty.
The Defenders, or whatever, have been chasing this crew for a while with little luck, but two days after finally calling Jessica she gets them a couple of leads. Murdock suggests they divide and conquer so Luke and Danny are off in Jersey to chase down a laundry service that may be a front and Jess and the devil boy himself got stuck with the docks. Though, if forced to choose between the smell of dead fish and the smell of Newark, Jess thinks she might have actually won that one. But now Jessica’s out, in the fucking freezing weather, wedged between two buildings and dozing off while on lookout and wondering if she got the crap assignment after all.
“I should be getting paid for this,” she grumbles to no one, shaking herself away and raising the telephoto camera up to snap shots of the suspiciously well-armed men starting to appear between the shipping containers.
A chuckle echoes above her and Jess jolts with a curse (“What are you, part cat? Fuck, warn a girl would ya?”) before twisting to see Matt in his stupid Daredevil outfit perched on the roof, “How about I just offer to buy you a bottle of whiskey?” he offers with a wry smile. Jessica snorts, resettling against the brick. “Oh, you’re on, Counselor. I expect the good shit, too.”
“No promises, Jones,” he retorts and it’s not that she smiles, exactly, but it’s close enough.
“Looks like the lead was a good one.” She says, and Matt nods like he already knew. Which he probably did - who knows how his weirdness worked?
Jess raises the camera to take another picture, but her hands aren’t exactly steady around the camera. It’s because it’s cold, damnit, she thinks as she rests the camera on her thighs to gulp down a hearty swig of her flask. When she looks up Murdock is frowning.
“What? Your Spidey-sense tingling?” she asks, scanning the shipyard for any action.
His frown deepens. “No, just.” He hesitates, and Jessica hates him in that pause, “You good? I just need to know that you’re up for this.”
“I’m a big girl, Murdock, I can handle myself,” she bites back. Using his real name always helps deflect and it works because he grounds out “It’s Daredevil, Jones” and the question is left unanswered.
Good, because she might not be but that’s not really the point. She’s here, she’s pissed about it, but she’s not just gonna pack up and go home either.
“Whatever, Beelzebub” she scoffs and lets them lapse into a tense silence.
Jessica isn’t looking at him, but she can almost sense when Matt goes rigid, all of his considerably better than hers attention focused somewhere in the shadows.
“There’s a problem,” he whispers.
“Yeah, no shit. What’s happening?”
“One of the girls got lose. Ordinarily I’d put that down as a good thing, but it’s going to split them up.” She can see his frustration. If he goes to help her, they run the risk of losing the rest of the girls. But if the bad guys catch her, she’s dead. The solution is easy but clearly Mr. I-can-save-everyone-alone isn’t seeing it.
“Which direction?” She’s shoving her camera in her bag and tossing it at him.
“Jess-“
“You stay on the group, I got this. Which goddamn direction?”
“To the west, she’s close to the water but I don’t hear a lot of light over there.”
“God, you’re weird,” she says in parting as she pushes off the wall. The ground cracks beneath her feet but she’s already running.
Jessica’s impressed - the girl ran pretty far. Fear’s funny that way; either you freeze or you get super speed. Jessica finds her crouched behind a shipping container staring at the giant, barbed wire lined fence that encloses the shipyard, a look of utter devastation in her eyes. Jess tries to approach without scaring her more, but come on, she knows from experience there’s no way to do that.
“Hey,” Jess whisper-calls, crouched down to seem smaller and less imposing, “I’m here to help!”
The girl looks up and, Christ, she can’t be more than 12, 12 and fucking terrified. Jess puts up her hands in front of her “I’m not gonna hurt you. I can get you out of here.”
The girl is looking at Jess with the correct amount of suspicion, which is all of it. Her dark eyes are narrowed and her posture defensive. The girl’s only got an oversized ragged t-shirt on to cover her dark skin, made darker with the bruises Jess can see all over her arms. Jess shrugs off her leather coat and throws it at the girl, who catches it but is clearly caught off guard by the gesture. No one’s been nice to her for nothing in a while, Jess would bet.
This situation probably calls for empathy and patience, but Jessica isn’t the most patient person so as the girl slowly puts on the jacket she’s debating just grabbing her and jumping over that fence when there’s a click noise to her right and -fuck- Jess knew she was too tired for this. She tries to dodge but she’s too slow, too clumsy, and suddenly she’s face first on the damp concrete. The pain doesn’t hit at first, and Jess is able to look up enough to see the girl is already gone, fled into the darkness.
Good instincts, Jess thinks but then she’s trying to get off the ground and standing is surprisingly hard but she does it and but there’s another click sound and this time Jessica does dodge, letting her instincts take over and she pulls herself up, fingers bending the metal of the shipping container she’s using for leverage as she turns to face the bastard who just shot her and teach him some goddamn manners.
She just didn’t know there were three of them, is all.
Jessica gets the girl out, and that’s what matters.
The girl’s name is Sophia. Jess was able to get that much out of her at least. If she got anything else she wouldn’t really know, the world is a bit hazy. She got them over the fence and hidden before she stopped being able to function anymore. Or maybe Sophia got them hidden? Either way, somehow Jess is curled up on the ground and Sophia’s on the ground next to her, wearing the leather jacket and pushing her hands into Jessica’s back for some reason.
Time seems to disappear and stretch in unequal measure and Jess finds that she’s relieved the kid stayed with her and didn’t run off, but she’s getting increasingly worried the already-probably-fucked-up-enough girl is gonna watch her die when Matt finds them.
Jess is suddenly really glad Luke and Danny aren’t here. At least Matt can’t see what a fucking mess she is.
“Damnit, Jessica,” he says, ripping off his gloves and striding over. Sophia stands up suddenly between them and Jess wraps a weak hand around her ankle.
“He’s good,” she manages. “He’ll keep you safe.” When she removes her hand there’s a bloody handprint left.
“Right now, I think I’m more worried about you,” the Devil says, already on his knees next to her. Jess blinks because she’s pretty sure he didn’t move. His red eyes seem to be looking at her and suddenly she’s gurgling out a laugh.
“Always knew I’d be going down, but I didn’t think Satan would come personally.”
“Shut up, Jones,” he growls. His hands are running down her sides and she snags one of them in her own bloody one.
“Did you get the rest out?” She presses, gaze hyper focused and intense.
“They’re all safe,” he tells her, and then he gently rolls her over and – oh, that hurts - she thinks, and then everything goes black and she’s not thinking at all.
Jessica wakes to pain, which is pretty normal, so her hand is reaching for the whiskey bottle by her bed before she figures out that she’s not in her bed. The panic hits in waves with the agony until her awareness kicks in and she realizes someone is holding her hand.
It’s the kid, she realizes. Sophia, still clad in her jacket, clinging to Jess’s hand off the side of a couch Jess is slowly understanding to be Matt’s.
There are the voices, now. Matt’s – low and careful, and another, ah, that would be Claire – sounding frustrated and 1000% done with their shit.
“She was shot, Matt. TWICE. You take her to the hospital when that happens.”
“Claire, you know how she feels about those. Guaranteed if we did she would’ve escaped before any of us noticed she’d woken up. Besides-” his voice drops, “The girl didn’t want to let go. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Claire’s beleaguered sigh would’ve made Jess laugh if she thought she could’ve. “Matt, I’m just a nurse. She might need surgery.”
“Do not,” Jess gripped, quiet enough that only Sophia should have heard her if Matt wasn’t such a freak.
“She’s awake,” he tells Claire, quickly moving to the couch as if he didn’t magically know she was awake already. Though maybe he hadn’t, because he looks 10 kinds of out of it.
“You look like shit, Murdock,” Jess tells him. He’s still in his gimp suit, except the helmet which he’s removed and there’s blood over one of his eyes. It’s a little startling when Jess realizes that its hers. His hair is a fluffy mess and his brown eyes, unfocused as always, are angled enough towards her that she can see the fury he’s clearly trying to hide.
“You should talk, Jones,” he tries and oh, she must be really bad off if he can’t even manage to soften the bite behind those words.
“Jesus, what crawled up your ass and died?” she asks, because she’s pretty sure that he’s pissed at her.
Matt’s sigh is almost as beleaguered as Claire’s had been, which seems to have been the nurse’s cue because suddenly Claire is addressing Sophia, “Hey, sweetie. She’s awake now, so can I look you over? We can go into this room for some privacy.”
Sophia just grips Jessica tighter and glares at both of them. Jess would honestly be touched by the clear defensiveness of the gesture but she’s not really the hand holding type and the kid should probably get some medical attention. She pulls at the hand Sophia’s clutching to get the girl’s attention.
“Go on, kid. She’s the best of all of us, I promise.” Sophia reluctantly nods, and then she’s gone into Matt’s bedroom with Claire and Jess’s hand is suddenly cold but Matt’s basically radiating red hot fury.
“Seriously, Murdock, what the hell seems to be your problem right now?”
Matt barks a laugh, “I should be asking you that, Jones. What the hell happened?”
“Pretty sure I got shot, Sherlock,” Jess retorts.
“Jess, this is serious,” Matt runs his hands through his hair in frustration, “If you’re not at 100% you need to tell me. You were clearly off your game tonight and now there are at least three men who got away.”
“You can’t seriously be blaming me for this.”
“Well, if you’d maybe been sober we might’ve gotten out of this without anyone getting shot!”
“As the person getting shot, I think I’m the one who’s supposed to be pissed off right now!” Okay, yelling probably isn’t the best idea, but it feels good too, so Jessica ignores the pangs of pain.
“Damnit Jess, what if you’d actually died out there?”
“Then I’d be fucking dead! I don’t see why it’s your problem!” she shouts, and for some reason that seems to shut Matt up but Jess has never been known to quit while she’s ahead, “Unlike some people I’d probably even have the decency to stay that way!”
And then Matt’s taking a step back like she slapped him, but Jess is fucking furious now; months of sitting on guilt and pain and trying to drink it all away and nightmares of every flavor there when she closed her eyes bubbling up in a self-destructive flood and she needs to get out, suddenly, so she’s got her blood covered hands braced against the cushions to push herself up like she isn't inches from passing out.
“Jesus, Jess” and then Murdock has got her hands on her shoulders, pushing her back down and she didn’t, she doesn’t even really mean too she just reacts and her hand flies out and he’s tumbling backwards, skidding across the hardwood floors.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” she growls, her breath clawing at her throat.
Matt gets to his feet, looking shell shocked, but approaches her the same way she approached Sophia in that shipyard. Low and non-threatening. The way you approach a frightened deer. It’s pissing her the fuck off but she can’t goddamn breathe “Birch St, Higgens, higgens,” but it gets stuck now because it hasn’t worked since Kilgrave infiltrated her childhood home – the one pure place she had - so her breathing just keeps sticking and it’s going to be so embarrassing if she dies this way-
“Jess, Jess it’s okay. Breathe with me,” and Matt’s there, inhaling and exhaling slowly, loudly, so she can follow, his hands out in front of him but not touching her. Her awareness tunnels to those hands and his breathing and slowly, she matches him, her hands pressed against her stomach so she can feel the air filling it.
Time has gotten strange again, so when she looks up Claire it there, a gentle arm wrapped around Sophia who looks rigid and unhappy. Claire is looking at Jess with a warm sort of pity that Jessica doesn’t have the energy to be mad about right now and the kid has got her hands fisted in Jessica’s jacket and is staring at the ground like it’ll hide her red-rimmed eyes.
Jess turns back to Matt, who’s kneeling beside her like she didn’t just toss him across the room. “Jess,” he starts, his voice soft but there’s no pity there, at least, “is it so hard to imagine that I don’t want to lose you?”
Jessica closes her eyes, turning her face into the couch and choosing to ignore the question, because yes, it is, and she’s just so tired and Matt’s telling her, “It’s okay, Jess. You can sleep,” and for once she listens.
When she wakes up in the middle of the night Matt’s asleep on the other end of the couch and Sophia’s on a blow-up mattress next to it, Jessica’s jacket pressed against her chest, and there, in the billboard glow of Matt’s apartment, Jessica lets herself believe that maybe some people are better off with her in their life. When she drifts back to sleep she dreams of every color but purple.